Treasury Services: How Business Gets Done

What are treasury services and how can they benefit your business? 

“Simply put,” says Beach Bank Tampa Bay Market President Henry Gonzalez, “treasury services are mechanisms that move money in and out of a bank account.” 

Treasury services, Gonzalez says, “have become much more digitized over the past few years.” 

Wire transfers, for example, are treasury services used to move money from one bank account to another, even across state and national borders. Similarly, automated clearing house (ACH) transfers are becoming the norm for how people pay bills and receive their paychecks. When was the last time you wrote or cashed a paper check? 

Wire transfers often require a fee, though, whereas ACH transfers can be less costly to send and receive. 

A lesser-known but highly useful — particularly for businesses— treasury service, according to Gonzalez, is a zero-balance account. “A ZBA can be very profitable for a company that has a lot of money moving around.” 

Here’s how it works: A ZBA client will typically have a line of credit and a couple of bank accounts. All funds that come into a designated account will be applied to paying off the line of credit. If there’s no balance on the line of credit, incoming funds will be routed to an account that earns interest. The original account then gets zeroed out, hence the name. 

Treasury services also include account analysis, a process that involves the bank taking a look at the funds going in and out of an account, and the average balance, and determining a fee and interest-rate structure that will incentivize the account holder to maintain a certain monthly balance. 

“If you keep a very high balance you will pay no bank charges,” Gonzalez notes. “It goes to the importance of having a high average balance.” 

Last but not least, treasury services also include remote deposit capture — devices that can quickly scan and process paper checks. “Banks give them away for free,” Gonzalez says. “It saves the bank client time and reduces the need for branches.”